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15878. arkymalarky - 7/18/2005 7:28:12 PM Hey Wonk! Didn't know you were traveling! 15879. wonkers2 - 7/18/2005 8:01:28 PM Orcas Island yesterday. Ste. Michelle winery yesterday. The wine was good, but it struck me as a wine factory of the type decried in the documentary "Mondovino." It's one of several owned by US Tobacco. The walls were covered with awards from the Wine Spectator. The tour guide gave me a "trip around the world" when I asked who owned the winery, but I weaseled the answer out of a woman at a desk near the door. 15880. thoughtful - 7/18/2005 10:16:09 PM and the other one that drives me nuts every fall is when people say 'foilage' instead of foliage. Though I'm more frequently hearing folage over foliage.
And then being close to NY, there is the perennial ax as in, ax me a question. Just sounds too murderous to me....I don't know...I'll have to ax him!
and can we forget the bostonian perversions where r's are deleted, except when there aren't anything? They don't pronounce shark and shock differently. But no girls are named donna but donnar...and remember jfk talking about missiles in cuber? 15881. thoughtful - 7/18/2005 10:20:13 PM mags, re dog training, the other thing I learned was to preface every command for the dog with the dog's name so they know you're talking to them. We forget how much chatter they hear and they can't be sure when you mean them.
Reminds me of an old NYer cartoon where the dog was sitting and listening to the master in the first frame, labeled "What the master says". Balloon shows master saying, "You're such a good dog, Trixie. You are so sweet, Trixie." Next frame is titled "What the dog hears". Balloon shows dog hearing, "Blah blah blah, Trixie. Blah blah blah, Trixie."
I also used to train my dogs with verbal and hand signals at the same time, so after a fashion, they would respond simply to the hand signals. 15882. prolph - 7/19/2005 1:14:50 AM and how about nuclear? It have been puzzeld that
Carter said nucular and was also a nuclear expert while in the navy.
However I am a seriously poor poster and ask to be forgiven and promise
not to post agaim, I shall return to lurking
gnats.Patsy 15883. arkymalarky - 7/19/2005 1:58:58 AM Oh please don't say that!
15884. Magoseph - 7/19/2005 1:59:17 AM Don’t do just lurk, Patsy—you must know how delighted we all are when we hear from you. 15885. Magoseph - 7/19/2005 2:01:51 AM mags, re dog training, the other thing I learned was to preface every command for the dog with the dog's name so they know you're talking to them. We forget how much chatter they hear and they can't be sure when you mean them.
Great advice, thoughtful, thanks much! 15886. Magoseph - 7/19/2005 2:16:18 AM The very old Frenchman we met Sunday invited us today for lunch—he wanted us to meet a friend of his who knows about real estate and finance. So Flexy was in his splendor having an animated conversation about subjects he loves to talk about while the Frenchman grilled me about my life in this country, This man has spent his life here and in France since he retired. One of his granddaughters wants to emigrate here hence his interest in what I had to say. 15887. Macnas - 7/19/2005 9:52:44 AM You don't want to hear me speak in my local tongue Arky & Ms.No, it'd kill you.
It's said that here in Cork we use a lot of Elizabethan english, especially in the way we structure our sentences. Not knowing a damn thing about Elizabethan english I'm hanged if I can give you a proper example. But I'll try and give you some of the more common oddities:
"I took my lunch to the park"
I brang me lunch to the park
"On the way there, I saw Dave"
And I going there, I see's Dave
"He had his lunch with him too"
He had his lunch and all
I said to him 'is there tea in that flask?'
I says to him 'is that a flask of tay?'
"He looked a bit sick, so I asked him what was the matter"
He was looking poorly, so I asks what ails him
"He said he was feeling fine, just tired from being out the night before"
He says he's grand, only knackered from being on the batter last night
"I asked him if he would go for a drink tonight, but he said "you must be joking!""
I asks him if he'll come out for a few later on, and he says "I will in my eye"
15888. Magoseph - 7/19/2005 11:33:13 AM I remember something like that and I found it, Mac.
To express your disbelief at what someone is telling you, use your index finger to pull down the skin under your eye and say, "Mon oeil“. This is equivalent to the English expression "My foot!"M/i>
15889. Ms. No - 7/19/2005 5:21:47 PM Mac,
Oddly enough much of that sounds very Southern. Just for a comparison:
I brang me lunch to the park
I brung my lunch to the park
And I going there, I see's Dave
On the way I sees Dave
He had his lunch and all
He had his lunch an' all
I says to him 'is that a flask of tay?'
I says to him 'that tea in your jar?'
He was looking poorly, so I asks what ails him
He's looking poorly so I asks what ails him
He says he's grand, only knackered from being on the batter last night He says he's fine just plumb wore out from last night.
I asks him if he'll come out for a few later on, and he says "I will in my eye"
I asks him if he'll come out for a few later on and he says 'In a pig's eye'
A friend of mine here in LA is from Cork and was telling me how much the accents there vary. She hardly has any at all and yet the people across the street from her are nearly impossible to understand.
I love listening to her and her husband talk and catching the little oddities -- she's much harder to catch than him. He's from Jamaica via NYC and has been living in LA for more than 10 years. He left Jamaica when he was 12 so I only hear that in his speech if he's had a LOT to drink. Caroline -- his wife -- doesn't even notice it. She's only been here in the States for about 3 years, but even when I first met her she didn't have much accent. 15890. Ms. No - 7/19/2005 5:22:12 PM toys
toys? 15891. Magoseph - 7/19/2005 5:37:24 PM Sorry for not picking up my toys, Ms. No--by the way, I put some pictures from my son of his "Lake Room" in The Good Life thread. Things at this are moving along nicely. 15892. Ms. No - 7/19/2005 5:45:23 PM Oh goody! I'll go look! 15893. arkymalarky - 7/19/2005 10:56:41 PM I was thinking the same thing about how Southern those lines sounded, before I got down to your posts, MsNo. Good job of showing just how similar they are. 15894. arkymalarky - 7/19/2005 10:59:02 PM I have a Swiss friend whose first language was German, and she didn't start speaking English until she moved to America at 16. I talked to her on the phone a few months ago, and I would never have guessed who she was. She'd completely lost any detectable accent. I was amazed. The last time I'd visited with her, just a few years before, she still had a mild accent. 15895. Magoseph - 7/19/2005 11:14:59 PM Germans are good at leaning languages, Arky, but your friend is obviously very gifted if she can be taken for an American. Most people who learn a language after puberty almost invariably have an accent, although it can be very slight, or rather heavy as it is in my case. 15896. arkymalarky - 7/20/2005 2:15:06 AM That's what I always thought, and it's the way she was for all the years she lived here. She called and had to tell me who she was, and I was still incredulous for a few minutes, thinking maybe another friend was teasing me or something. 15897. Macnas - 7/20/2005 10:14:05 AM Mago
Isn't that interesting? Similar phrase and meaning.
Ms.No
I never thought of the language of the American south being so similar.
Maybe it's due to all those Scots and Irish? Most of the odd word structure is a direct result of the use of Irish/Gaelic language grammar being directly translated and carried through when formulising sentences. For instance, if I were to say "I said" in Irish, it would be "duirt me", with duirt (doo-ert) being 'to say', and "me" (may) being 'I', hence "says I".
I know that in music, particularly some bluegrass and oldtime, I can pick out similar tunes and constructs to our own folk music here.
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